Aestheticization as a macro-process of social and cultural reconstruction of modern society

Abstract

Aestheticization is a multidimensional process that occurs in all areas of social space and is outwardly manifested as the reconstruction of social relations, social practices and knowledge through emphasizing expressive features of their forms. Definitions of aesthetization suggested by different scientists are based, as a rule, on the study of particular manifestations of the process (e.g., aestheticization of politics, history, sports, suffering, violence, war, etc.). This gives rise to fragmentation and discreteness of the existing vision of aestheticization and generates misunderstanding of the scale and depth of the social changes taking place today. Integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of aestheticization, as well as addressing the broad social context of its manifestations, allowed us to offer a comprehensive scientific understanding of the phenomenon as a macro-process. Its essence lies in the construction and dissemination of aesthetically attractive, sensually expressive forms of the physical and social beingness of a person and society, which is fostering some values and meanings and setting some social order in the society with relevant worldview and ideology. In the article we present and describe a model of how aestheticization is manifested. In this model we identify four dimensions of aestheticization in the hierarchy of levels of its incarnation in the social space: sensory-perceptual, metaphysical, myth-generating and ideological. Aestheticization liberalizes organic pleasure and freedom in the sensual, cultivates the illusion of presence, disseminates in society mass forms of pseudo-reality, shapes new mythological thinking and, thereby, embodies a new ideology.